


Hell's Frozen Over

by RenegadeAATL (DreamsOfGold)



Series: Soldiers Of Fortune [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 16:44:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2475260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfGold/pseuds/RenegadeAATL
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All things considered, York had been in much worse situations, and being stuck in a small cave, huddling together with his teammates for warmth wasn't the worst thing he could imagine by far.<br/>But, well, let's just say that if he imagine getting up close and personal with anyone during a blizzard, Wyoming wouldn't have been his first pick. And it probably wouldn't be right after a spectacularly failed mission.<br/>It's not really his day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell's Frozen Over

**Author's Note:**

> First story I've managed to post on here, I'm back logged a bit. I have far too many stories waiting in the wings.  
> First of my series Soldiers Of Fortune

Drop It Like It’s Hot

 

It had been a relatively simple operation, considering the shit storms they usually got into. Small, requiring only three agents and their trusty, glorified taxi service to get them in and extract them whenever necessary.

Completely standard, drop off at insertion point, York sneaking in through the base's rear towards the target warehouse, Wyoming covering him from just outside the base in the trees above, and Florida spotting for him. Get in, get the information, get out.

Very simple.

Except, somehow it wasn't. They didn't know immediately how it had all gone tits up so suddenly, but it had been glaringly obvious that someone had tipped their hosts off. The welcome party for York had taken him by surprise and he'd barely gotten out of there by the skin of his teeth, and even then, not without taking a bullet to the arm.

York had been pinned down after that, forced to pull back to their insertion point, and then even farther back into the tree-line when their comm-link to the Mother of Invention had cut out, curtesy of radio jammers.

Wyoming had done his best to keep his teammate's back clear, but there was only so much one sniper could do at a time, especially after he drew attention to himself by firing off bullets like clockwork into the nearly endless stream of enemy soldiers that oozed out of the woodwork of the damn base.

Their only option had been to retreat after that, regroup when possible and try to stay alive and uninjured and unfrozen until help arrived, whenever that may be.

Somehow, _somehow_ they had manage to get off of the enemy radars, but that came with its own price to pay; they'd had to make a run for it, through the two feet of snow, through the bitterly cold forest, blindly running like a bunch of lunatics because who wouldn't be if they were being chased by half an army with tanks and a shit load of guns and ammunition, none of which they had themselves.

Eventually, once they were sure that they were out of the immediate threat of being blown to smithereens by a bunch of trigger-happy idiots, they were forced to stop to rest and attempt to contact the Mother of Invention again.

They found a spot under the shelter (shelter being a loose term in this situation) of a rock alcove, large enough for all three of them to press themselves inside, armour and all, to avoid the prying eyes still looking for them.

All attempts to re-establish contact with the ship had failed, a problem that had originally been caused by the radio jammers now was more likely due to the huge storm that was very obviously bearing down on them. The sheer fact that it was blocking their signal was a good estimate to exactly how big that storm was; and how fucked they were if they didn't get out soon.

After that, there wasn't much to do, except bunker down and keep trying to contact the ship.

Even the enemy search parties were likely to have been recalled to the base because the storm. The fact that York hadn't even gotten to the "get the information" part of the plan didn't give the resistance much motivated to look for then in a blizzard, plus, three idiots wandering in the woods without Intel or a significant amount of ammo were not much of a problem, and with the incoming weather catastrophe....

The resistance soldiers probably expected them to die, they weren't going to spend the energy looking for them.

Even so, the odds were not exactly in the agents favour.

All three of them knew that as they sat with their backs pressed against stone, humming and hawing while Wyoming tried to boost the signal on his own radio, which was still going poorly, evidently, since he was punctuating every few seconds with a muttered expletive.

"No luck?" York murmured, turning his helmeted head to make eye/helmet-contact with Wyoming.

The sharpshooter had taken his own helmet off about ten minutes ago to start tinkering with his equipment, since the easiest way to amplify the signal was through their helmet, and it was damn clear that he was feeling the chill.

His face was slowly turning a bright red, eyes blinking rapidly to keep from freezing, and his facial hair was starting to frost over.

"None, whatsoever. We seem to be short on luck today." The white-armoured man mused, particularly calm for their circumstances. "I have, however, managed to boost the signal slightly. Not at all enough to make it through those though." He pointed up and out of their almost-cave to the mass of greying clouds swirling snow down on them.

"Right." York fell silent for a moment, glancing to look at Florida, who was sitting quietly to his right, then back to the red-faced Wyoming. "You wanna borrow my helmet for a few minutes? Dealing with frostbite on someone's face isn't high on my list of things I want to do right now."

Wyoming shifted, flipped his own helmet over in his hands as he looked up again and huffed out a breath that floated in the air for a few seconds before it dissipated.

"That would be preferable. Shall we swap every few minutes?"

"Sure." York reached up and unsealed his helmet with his good arm, taking his first breathe of unfiltered, freezing air with a rasp as he handed it across.

Wyoming put his own helmet down on his knee for a moment to grab York's tan one, slipping it over his own head and sealing it in place.

The HUD immediately notified him that he was wearing a different variation of armour than it was used to be attached to, but he quickly dismissed it and went back to fiddling with the transmitter in his lap.

"It smells like your breath in here, mate." Wyoming tilted his head to one side in a way that made York imagine he was grimacing.

"Could be worse." The infiltration specialist lifted one corner of his mouth in a half-smile. "I could've had those caramelised onions on my breakfast sandwich this morning."

Wyoming repeated the head-tilt, with slightly more force this time. "I am ever grateful you did not. Are you still bleeding?" He gestured vaguely to the other man's arm.

"Nope, it stopped. I'll be fine." York continued to grin, closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the cold stone behind him. He was definitely feeling the chill creeping through him now that his helmet was off, and it would by lying to say that he was comfortable without his HUD on in a situation like this.

It was deathly quiet outside, as was usual in a frozen, ice-for-miles tundra.

But the silence was crushingly immense, the lack of noise made him question whether or not he had gone deaf every few seconds, until someone shifted and armour scraped against rock or Wyoming plucked at a wire hard enough to hear.

Otherwise it was white noise, blood rushing in his ears to the beat of his heart.

It would drive him up the wall eventually, he knew, and sooner rather than later. If he lived long enough for his mental state to become a problem, of course.

"What time is it now?"

Florida's head moved an inch in his direction as he responded. "About 0700 now. Been a few hours."

"Huh. Time flies when you're having fun." York commented dryly.

Florida was right, they'd been kicked off the pelican at 0400 in order to avoid the worst of the morning patrols at the base, their skirmish through the base and into the forest had been a good twenty five minutes of running and hiding and running again. Contact had been completely lost with the Mother of Invention around 0500, they'd regrouped soon after and here they were now.

It was strange how quickly hope of rescue diminished after a certain point.

At first, extraction had seemed so close, only minutes away. After that had been aborted, it was a quarter of an hour. Then an hour. Now it was unlikely that their recovery beacons could punch through the cloudy atmosphere if they kicked the bucket, and extraction wasn't even something to be considered possible at the moment.

York could only be glad that it wasn't snowing hard.

He looked up at the sky again, watched the clouds roll over them in dark patterns. "We should probably get moving again soon, if we're planning on doing that."

Wyoming put his helmet down again, leaned back like he was considering something. "Hm. And your arm?"

"I told you; it's fine. I'm not going to be scaling any cliffs any time soon, but I'm not losing blood anymore and the biofoam is taking care of it."

"Biofoam isn't a permanent solution."

York heaved a sigh, watching the hot air curl its way to the roof of the overhang.

"I know that. So let's either keep moving to somewhere we can get a better signal at or decide to stay here and somehow fortify this place against the snow. Florida?"

The blue-armoured agent looked up from whatever small device he was tinkering with, giving both men a glance through his helmet before he spoke. "We need to re-establish contact with the ship, but unless we want them to find a bunch of Freelancer-cicles come tomorrow morning, I'll put my money down on staying here and attempting to wait out the storm. I don't like it." Florida shrugged. "But what's our other option?"

"I dunno," York ran his uninjured hand through his frosty hair, eyes on the ground. "Don't have many."

Neither of the other two agents deigned to answer him, which wasn't a surprise.

The three of them were all too aware of their position.


End file.
